Glucksman Ireland House Events Calendar Fall 2005

Fall 2005

Free admission to Members of GlucksmanIreland House and to all students/faculty with a valid NYU I.D. card.  For all others: $10 admission charge at the door for regular event series: $15 admission charge at the door forBlarney Star Concert Series.

In order to ensure a seat please call ahead 212-998-3950

September 15, Thursday, 7 pm

Sharon O’Brien, John Hope Caldwell Professor of American Cultures and professor of American Studies and English at Dickinson College, discusses “Remembering Skibbereen: Writing an Irish American Memoir” based on her book, The Family Silver (University of Chicago Press, 2004); an odyssey into Irish American history as it was experienced by the Quinlans and O’Briens of Elmira NY and Lowell MA, exploring values of upward mobility, progress and achievement in a family that traced the departure of its ancestors from Ireland in the famine years of the 1840s.

September 22, Thursday, 7 pm

Architecture shapes the spaces in which art is made, shown and seen. But what constitutes the ideal gallery space? Can there even be such a thing? And what shape does the architecture of contemporary art spaces make for art today? Exploring a topic as impassioned and complex in Ireland as it is in the US, Gemma Tipton discusses how Ireland’s historic and colonial legacy, and more recent economic success has been reflected in its buildings and in the development of a new, confident, architectural approach to building for art. Gemma Tipton is Editor of Space: Architecture for Art, an analysis and survey of art galleries and museums inIreland.

September 23, Friday 9 pm

THE BLARNEY STAR CONCERT SERIES

June McCormack and Michael Rooney

Draíocht, the title of the latest recording bySligo flute player June McCormack and Monaghan harper/concertina player Michael Rooney, means “magic” in Irish and is an apt description of their virtuosi duet playing. Their performance last year was one of the highlights of the first Blarney Star concert season in Ireland House.

September 29, Thursday 7 pm

Venue: NYU Iris &GeraldB.CantorFilmCenter,36 East 8th Street

Songs & Stories:New York remembers Rory Gallagher: a screening of an hour-long documentary film produced and directed by Victor Zimet, Stephanie Silber and Seamus Kelleher, under the auspices of Home Team Productions, followed by a conversation with Seamus Kelleher and Donal Gallagher, brother, former manager and executor of the late artist’s estate.

Rory Gallagher, the late Irish blues guitar great, died in 1995, too young but not without leaving a legion of fans worldwide and over 20 million albums sold.  His fiery guitar work rivaled that of contemporaries Eric Clapton and Jimi Hendrix, putting his country on the R & B map at the height of the Troubles in Northern Ireland.  An eminent group ofNew York City and Irish musicians rocked the legendary Bottom Line at a tribute performance to celebrate Rory's life and work, and the stunning night was captured like lightning in a bottle.  This is Rory's story, told through his songs and the memories of those who loved and were inspired by him.

October 5, Wednesday 6 pm

THE INAUGURAL DANIEL PATRICK MOYNIHAN MEMORIAL LECTURE

Venue: Jack H. Skirball Center for the Performing Arts, NYU, 566 LaGuardia Place

Glucksman Ireland House is pleased to announce that Professor Jeffrey Sachs, Columbia University, will deliver the inaugural lecture in a series named in honor of the late Senator Moynihan and intended to commemorate his contributions to political and economic affairs around the world. U2's Bono will introduce Prof. Sachs. Both men are renowned for their efforts to reduce poverty and debt of Third World countries through economic reform. Prof. Sachs is an advisor to the United Nations, as well as to governments in Latin America, Eastern Europe, the Former Soviet Union, Asia, and Africa. Bono first became involved in issues affecting Africa as part of Live Aid response to the Ethiopian famine in 1984.  Since, he has worked to support organizations such as Amnesty International, Greenpeace, and Jubilee 2000's 'Drop the Debt'.  This is by far not the first collaboration between Prof. Sachs and Bono; Bono wrote the foreword to Prof. Sachs' landmark bestseller, The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities for Our Time.

Tickets are available online at http://www.skirballcenter.nyu.edu or by calling or visiting the Shagan Box Office (adjacent to the Skirball Center) at 566 LaGuardia Place, just south of Washington Square South, (212) 992-8484, Tuesday through Saturday 12-6pm.  Also, by calling or visiting Ticket Central at 416 West 42nd Street, between 9th and 10th Avenues, (212) 279-4200, daily 12-8pm.  Avoid ticketing fees by purchasing tickets in person.  Unlike any of our other events of the semester, admission to the Moynihan lecture is not included in membership to Glucksman Ireland House NYU.

October 7, Friday 9 pm

THE BLARNEY STAR CONCERT SERIES

Randal Bays and Roger Landes

One of the very best American-born fiddlers in Irish music, Randal is also a superb finger-style guitarist who has performed and recorded with traditional music celebrities, including Martin Hayes, James Kelly and Dáithí Sproule. His partner for this concert, as on the recent recording House to House,  is the excellent bouzouki and guitar accompanist Roger Landes.

October 12, Wednesday, 7:30 pm

Penguin Press launches Tony Judt's latest book, POSTWAR: A History of Europe Since 1945.  Professor Judt is the Erich Maria Remarque Professor in European Studies, a Professor of History, and the Director of NYU's Remarque Institute.

October 13, Thursday, 7 pm

The Family Silver

That spoon fell out
Of my mother's mouth
Before I was born,
But I was endowed
With a tuning fork

Samuel Menashe reads from New and Selected Poems edited by Christopher Ricks, (Library of America). Menashe was the recent recipient of The Poetry Foundation’s first Neglected Masters Award, designed to bring renewed critical attention to the work of an under-recognized, significant American poet. Born inNew York City in 1925, his first book, The Many Named Beloved, was published inLondon in 1961. Described by Stephen Spender in the New York Review of Books as a poet who “compresses thought into language intense and clear as diamonds” Menashe will be introduced by Professor Denis Donoghue.

October 20, Thursday, 7 pm

Gillen D’Arcy Wood reads from Hosack’s Folly: A Novel of OldNew York. Set in the 1820s its protagonist, Dr. David Hosack, founder ofBellevueHospital, battles another yellow fever outbreak, attempting to convince the mayor and the city elite to close the ports. A key fictional character is Eamonn Casey, an Irish immigrant who rose from poverty to become the editor ofNew York’s most powerful newspaper, The Herald, and who plans to run for governor. Wood grew up inAustralia and came toNew York in 1992 on a Fulbright scholarship to study atColumbiaUniversity. He has published extensively on nineteenth-century art and literature.

October 27, Thursday, 7 pm

Exhibition of work by Mary Donnelly. Originally from Dundalk, Co Louth, Mary has been living and working inConnemara since 1991 where she finds her inspiration. Credited with having a unique vision in which her work celebrates the beauty of rural Ireland in a very different way, going beyond a painted exploration of what can be seen by the naked eye, Mary received the Oriel Gallery Award for “Landscape of Distinction” at the Royal Hibernian Academy Annual Group Exhibition, Dublin in 2004. She also had a very successful solo exhibition in the Hallward Gallery,Dublin , which received critical acclaim in the Irish Times. In 2003 Mary exhibited at the University of Virginia Art Museum in “Re-Imagining Ireland: Irish Art Today” and at the Christa Faut Gallery inNorth Carolina. She is the recipient of many bursaries and awards and is a contributor to An Leabhar Mór: The Great Book of Gaelic.

November 3, Thursday, 7 pm

Venue: NYU Helen & Martin Kimmel Center for University Life, 60 Washington Square South

THE ERNIE O’MALLEY LECTURE SERIES

Minds to Hands: The End of a Golden Age for Irish-American Teachers, 1920-1935 Distinguished scholar Janet Nolan, Loyola University, Chicago, delivers the seventh annual lecture in this series endowed by Cormac K. H. O’Malley in honor of his father. Based on her recent book, Servants of the Poor: Teachers and Mobility in Ireland and Irish America, (Notre Dame Press, 2004) and upon research for a forthcoming volume, the lecture will explore the lives of two Irish-American women in Chicago, Justitia Coffey, BVM, and Margaret Haley. Both were daughters of Irish-born parents, and both defended Irish-American teachers inChicago's public schools against official opposition to teacher professionalism.

November 4, Friday 9 pm

THE BLARNEY STAR CONCERT SERIES
Michael Cooney and Pat Egan 
Michael Cooney is a three-time All-Ireland uilleann pipes champion and tin whistle great who was for many years a musical partner of button accordion great Joe Burke. For this performance, he will be joined by singer and guitarist Pat Egan, a fellowTipperary native best known for his work with the trio Chulrua.

November 5, Saturday 2 pm

The Roundtable will host its second panel discussion featuring 20th-century Irish immigrants to New York City. The panelists include: Aine Grealy, Bill McGimpsey, Hugh O'Lunney, Eileen Reilly, and Mike Ward. Discussion will be moderated by Linda Dowling Almeida, adjunct professor at New York University and long time Roundtable member.

November 10, Thursday, 7 pm

John M. Hearne, Economic & Social History, Waterford Institute of Technology, and Rory Cornish,Winthrop University,South Carolina, launch Thomas Francis Meagher: The Making of an Irish American (Irish Academic Press). Romantic Young Irelander, republican revolutionary, father of the Irish tricolor and political exile, Thomas Francis Meagher became a citizen of theUnited States and a leading ethnic spokesman in his adopted republic.  The first commanding general of the famed Irish Brigade during the American Civil War and post-war de-facto governor ofMontanaTerritory until his mysterious death in 1867, Meagher's career remains as controversial today as it was during his own lifetime.

November 17, Thursday, 7 pm

Professor Lucy McDiarmid launches The Irish Art of Controversy (Cornell University Press). Controversies are high drama: in them people speak lines as colorful and passionate as any recited on stage. In the years before the 1916 Rising, public battles were fought inIreland over French paintings, a maverick priest,Dublin slum children, and theatrical censorship. McDiarmid offers a witty and illuminating account of these and other controversies, antagonistic exchanges with no single or no obvious high ground.

December 1, Thursday, 7 pm

Airneál na Nollaig: An ever-popular evening of traditional music and dance to celebrate the advent of the holiday season hosted by Pádraig Ó Cearúill, Irish Language Lecturer at New York University.  Bí Linn!

December 2, Friday 9 pm

THEBLARNEY STAR CONCERT SERIES

Séamus Mac Conaonaigh and Marie Reilly

Connemara native Séamus gets an amazingly powerful tone from his wooden flute. The Galway man's up-tempo style and fertile melodic imagination are perfectly complemented by the fiery fiddle playing of his fiancée Marie Reilly, a New York native and a veteran of the famed Cherish the Ladies ensemble.